Variant chronology
1967 - UK Decca mono, deep-groove label, no tax code, GEMA printed beneath BIEM NCB (true first pressing)
1968-c.1971 - UK Decca mono, non-deep-groove label, J/T tax code added, 33 1/3 speed badge at 9 o'clock <- this copy
c.1973-on - later Decca UK reissues and overseas licensed pressings (e.g. World Record Club Australia unique-cover edition)
The Album
Recorded live at London's famed Talk of the Town cabaret venue, this 1967 album captured Tom Jones at the moment he was transitioning from teen-idol pop hitmaker into a full-blown Las Vegas-style showman, complete with orchestra, tuxedo, and a set built around standards, soul covers, and his own recent hits. The set list mixes Jones's own chart successes such as "It's Not Unusual", "What's New Pussycat?", "Green, Green Grass of Home" and "Thunderball" with soul and R&B staples by Sam Cooke ("Ain't That Good News", "Shake") and Fats Domino/Chris Kenner's "Land of a Thousand Dances", alongside show-tune and pop standards like "Hello Young Lovers" and "That Old Black Magic". Produced by Peter Sullivan, Jones's regular Decca producer through his 1960s run, with Johnny Harris directing the orchestra, the album documents the powerful, theatrical baritone and stagecraft that were already making Jones one of Britain's biggest live draws and would soon carry him into a long, hugely successful Las Vegas residency career. It stands as an important document of the mid-1960s British vocal-pop and blue-eyed-soul crossover scene, showing a UK pop star confidently working American R&B and soul repertoire for a supper-club audience, and it remains a well-regarded snapshot of peak-1960s Tom Jones as a live performer rather than a studio hitmaker.
The Label
This copy carries the red Decca ffrr label with the full 'MADE IN ENGLAND · THE DECCA RECORD CO. LTD' rim text, BIEM NCB / GEMA rights-society text, and a 'J/T' purchase-tax code alongside the bracketed matrix number. Discogs variant notes for this catalog number identify the earliest 1967 pressing as a deep-groove label with no tax code at all, with the J/T code only appearing on labels 'released no earlier than 1968' as Decca's tax-marking convention was applied. Combined with the second-generation stamper suffix in the collector's transcription (ARL/ZAL-7855-2A and -7856-2A, versus the -1W stamper seen on the earliest pressing), this places the disc as a UK repress from roughly 1968 into the early 1970s rather than the true first pressing, though the still full-text 'ffrr' Decca label design (pre-dating Decca's early-1970s boxed-logo redesign) rules out a later-1970s repress.
Fidelity
Recorded and mixed for a live cabaret release, mastered from Decca's original tapes with engineering credited to Bill Price; collectors generally rate original-era UK Decca mono ffrr pressings of Jones's Talk of the Town album as solid, punchy period cuts well suited to the big-band-with-vocal live sound, though this is a mono repress rather than the first-cut deep-groove pressing, so it sits a notch below the earliest stampers in outright transfer generation. No audiophile remaster (Analogue Productions/Mobile Fidelity/Speakers Corner etc.) of this specific live title is documented, so vintage UK Decca pressings remain the reference copies for collectors; within that group, this J/T-coded repress ranks below the first deep-groove pressing but above later-1970s/reissue-era copies.
Notes
This is a UK mono Decca pressing of LK 4874, but not the earliest issue: the true 1967 first pressing has a deep-groove label with no tax-code text at all, whereas this copy shows the 'J/T' purchase-tax code that Decca began adding to labels from 1968 onward. The collector's matrix transcription (-2A stampers on both sides) is also a later cutting generation than the -1W stampers documented on the first pressing. Label design (full 'ffrr' text, BIEM NCB/GEMA rim text, no boxed-logo) still places it before Decca's early-1970s label redesign, so this is best described as a c.1968-1971 UK repress rather than a true first pressing or a much later reissue.
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